Rex Errant: Jailbreaking the Necronomicon

The Necronomicon, a book so dangerous and unbalanced, they tried to taboo it with a silly little 3 XP penalty.

But evil so great can't be stopped so easily. And with a mere 15 XP it can just about break the game.

Here’s a deck that SUPER-CHARGES The Necronomicon with UNLIMITED USES.

Pass any test! Shoplift clues! Draw through your deck! And obliterate the occasional pest — like Yig — with a fast action!

Get The Necronomicon in play and see just HOW RIDICULOUSLY HIGH you can get its Secrets Count by drawing tons of cards and churning your deck.

(Set-up correctly, a single trip through your deck is an additional 18 secrets, with 30+ more than possible...)

Your best opening hand is Research Librarian and either Aridane’s Twine or The Necronomicon. Mulligan hard for this.

Choose other cards for draw: Perception, Grim Memoir, Practice Makes Perfect, Preposterous Sketches.

If possible, play Aridane’s Twine or The Necronomicon first and follow-up with the Research Librarian.

Get through your deck quick. Spend cards like they’re candy. Keep charging The Necronomicon.

You'll just need both Eldritch Sophists and the occasional Forbidden Tome to be fully set-up.

• The Necronomicon is the source of all your power.

• Ariadne’s Twine gives you a secondary place to hold secrets (and TURNS RESOURCES INTO SECRETS when you’ve got the spare cash).

• Research Librarian finds your precious books: the Necronomicon if you don’t have it, the Grim Memoir (for card draw), or a Forbidden Tome.

  Equally importantly, it searches your deck, triggering all of your—

• Astounding Revelation gives you resources for early game set-up or ADDS SECRETS to the Necronomicon.

  Once you’ve gotten through your deck once, you’re going to want to trigger this card again (and again and again)...

  So have a new Research Librarian ready to go or use Practice Makes Perfect to draw them out.

• Miskatonic Research: Bumping your ally limit to 3, so that in addition to a Research Librarian in play you can also have both copes of—

• Eldritch Sophist: The other staples of your deck engine, giving you SIX ADDITIONAL SECRETS and SYPHONING SECRETS off of other assets at the rate of TWO A ROUND, namely—

• The Forbidden Tome: The final piece of the puzzle. Coming into play at the cost of one resource and holding 5 SECRETS, the Forbidden Tome isn’t a book you want to translate — IT'S A BATTERY.

  Drain it dry, discard it, then grab it again with Scavenging.

  The Necronomicon will never run out of juice.

Arcane Enlightenment lets you juggle a third tome in play.

Truth from Fiction and Enraptured give you EVEN MORE SECRETS.

Shortcut helps you with the only thing the Necronomicon doesn't — movement.

Preposterous Sketches should be abandoned for Cryptic Research.

Forbidden Tome should NEVER BE UPGRADED.

Everything else upgrades to its nicer version (I’d go Cryptic Research, then Perception).

About the only thing Rex can’t do well is move, so if you want to completely dominate there’s always Pathfinder or Esoteric Atlas (at the cost of a Shortcut perhaps?).

0 Xp is much the same: ditch the Necronomicon, Miskatonic Funding, and Ariadne's, and either double the Grim Memoir and Arcane Enlightenment or add an Occult Lexicon and Disc of Itzamna if you're concerned about enemies.

This was inspired by Valentin1331s Minhfinite Deck, and seeing just what high card draw and churning your deck can accomplish.

I played this deck through The Forgotten Age (standard difficulty, alongside a Sledgehammer Wendy build) and it was unsurprisingly brutal. The Necronomicon was mainly used to pass tests (Rex rarely needing more clue grabbing) and it reached a peak 31 Secrets in Depths of Yoth where Yig was destroyed with a fast action and 7 Secrets to spare.